Ed Royce: 'Collapse' North Korea regime

Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) said Friday that the U.S. and international community should cut off money to North Korea so that “the regime collapses” instead of “rewarding them for bad behavior.”

“My suggestion is […] instead of repeating the old pattern and rewarding them for bad behavior… that the international community now cut off the international banking system to North Korea so that the regime collapses or such pressure is put on it that the generals decide that they don’t like not getting paid,” Royce said on CNN. “We did this before in 2005 when we caught them counterfeiting $100 U.S. bills and it really brought that regime to its knees.”

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“In the past, this has worked for North Korea. The basic strategy has been to create threats and then try to get aid from the West. And I think that’s one of the strategies that has unfortunately got us to this point. Because the ability to get hard currency into that regime is what’s allowed it to pay for its missile program and its very expensive program to develop a nuclear weapon,” he said.

He continued: “And at this point, I think we should rethink our strategy which we’ve had since 1994 because it hasn’t worked for us… We should instead be thinking right now of how we can cut off the flow of hard currency into the regime so that it can’t pay for further expansions of its weapon program.”